Kingman Island - History of The Site

History of The Site

Prior to the arrival of European settlers in the 18th century, the Anacostia River was a fast-flowing and relatively silt-free river with very few mudflats or marshes. White settlers cleared much of the surrounding forest for farmland, however, and extensive soil erosion led to a heavy load of silt and effluent in the Anacostia. In 1805, local landowner Benjamin Stoddert built a wooden bridge over the Anacostia River at the present site of Benning Bridge. The bridge was sold Thomas Ewell, who in the 1820s sold it to William Benning. Thereafter the structure was known as Benning's Bridge (or Benning Bridge). The wooden bridge was rebuilt several times after 1805. This included construction of a steel bridge in 1892. The construction of Benning and other bridges and the diversion of inflowing streams to agricultural use also slowed the river's current, allowing much of the silt to settle and be deposited.

Between 1860 and the late 1880s, large mudflats ("the Anacostia flats") formed on both banks of the Anacostia River due to this deforestation and runoff. At this time, the city allowed its sewage to pour untreated into the Anacostia. Marsh grass began growing in the flats, trapping the sewage and leading public health experts to conclude that the flats were unsanitary. Health officials also feared that the flats were a prime breeding ground for malaria- and yellow fever-carrying mosquitoes. By 1876, a large mudflat had formed immediately south of Benning Bridge and another flat some 740 feet (230 m) wide had developed south of that. By 1883, a stream named "Succabel's Gut" traversed the upper flat and another dubbed "Turtle Gut" the lower, and almost all flats on the river hosted substantial populations of American lotus, lily pads, and wild rice.

In 1898, officials with the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the District of Columbia convinced the United States Congress that the Anacostia River should be dredged to create a more commercially viable channel that would enhance the local economy. The dredged material would be used to build up the marshes—drying them out and eliminating the public health dangers they caused, as well as creating land where factories or warehouses might be built. Although the height of the reclaimed land would vary from 14 feet (4.3 m) to 24 feet (7.3 m) (the amount of dredged material depended on how much money was appropriated), the Corps of Engineers hoped to reclaim mudflats from Pennsylvania Avenue SE north to at least Benning Bridge.

Decisions on how to use the newly created land occurred over the next few years. In 1900, the United States Senate established the McMillan Commission, a body to advise the Congress and District of Columbia on ways to improve the parks, monuments, memorials, and infrastructure of the city as well as plan for urban renewal, economic growth, and expansion of the federal government. The McMillan Commission concluded that commercial land was not needed and proposed turning the reclaimed flats into parkland. The D.C. government agreed in 1905, and the United States Commission of Fine Arts (a federal advisory agency with review authority over the design and aesthetics of projects within Washington, D.C.) and the Army Corps of Engineers concurred in 1914. Most of the reclaimed mudflats were subsequently declared to be parkland and named Anacostia Water Park (now Anacostia Park) in 1919. The National Capital Park and Planning Commission (NCPPC) signed on (belatedly) to the park plan in 1928.

The original dredging plan called for a channel 15 feet (4.6 m) wide on the Anacostia's west bank from the 11th Street Bridges to Massachusetts Avenue SE, narrowing to a 9-foot (2.7 m) wide channel from Massachusetts Avenue SE to the Maryland-District border line. In addition to this channel (which was meant to facilitate the passage of cargo ships), the McMillan Commission proposed building a dam across the Anacostia River at Massachusetts Avenue SE or at Benning Bridge to form a large lake for fishing and recreational boating. The Commission also proposed using dredged material to build islands within the lake. The Washington Post reported in July 1914 that Congress had approved the plan for a dam on the river at Massachusetts Avenue SE. By 1916, the Corps of Engineers was still planning a dam, with access to the 9-foot (2.7 m) deep lake behind it controlled by locks. The Corps also planned to create several large islands in the lake and planned to replace Benning Bridge with a drawbridge to accommodate cargo ship traffic through the lake.

The firm of Sanford and Brooks began the dredging in January 1903, at which time the Army Corps of Engineers began surveying the surrounding land to determine whether the federal government or private landowners had title to the marshes themselves. The survey work was complete by November 1905, with the U.S. government asserting ownership over the flats. In June 1912, Congress appropriated $100,000 to dredge the Anacostia from the 11th Street Bridges to the District-Maryland line. In June 1915, the dredges discovered two large anchors with many feet of chain attached to them. The anchors were believed to have come from United States Navy gunboat barges burned on the Anacostia River in 1814 during the War of 1812. Both Kingman Island and Heritage Island were completed in 1916.

In 1915, ownership of the newly-created land became an issue in a lawsuit. The boundary of the District of Columbia had been set by the Black-Jenkins Award, a decision by an arbitration panel in 1874 which resolved centuries of dispute by placing Virginia's boundary with Maryland at the low-water mark on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. The Virginia retrocession of 1846-1847 returned a portion of the District of Columbia on the Virginia site of the Potomac River to the state of Virginia. This left in doubt the exact position of the District's border with Virginia. In Morris v. United States, 174 U.S. 196 (1899), the Supreme Court of the United States held that land built in the Potomac River not only belonged to the District of Columbia but to the federal government (contrary to the claims of private landowners, who believed the property belonged to them). In Maryland v. West Virginia, 217 U. S. 1 (1910), the U.S. Supreme Court again affirmed that Maryland's southern border extended to the low-water mark on the far side of the Potomac River. The issue arose again in 1915, when the Washington Steel & Ordnance Company claimed it owned the newly-created land in the Anacostia River created by the dredging operation. The District of Columbia Supreme Court held on December 29, 1915, that the federal government held title to the land. But this decision was overturned on technical grounds by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington Steel & Ordnance Company v. Martin, 45 App. 600 (1917). Nonetheless, in dicta in Washington Steel & Ordnance Company, the court of appeals made note of the Supreme Court's ruling in Morris v. United States and held that the reclaimed land belonged to the federal government. The issue as to who owned the dredged land and islands seemed settled.

By 1920, the Corps of Engineers had dropped the dam idea and instead proposed creating a 6-foot (1.8 m) deep lake on one side of the Anacostia River by linking several of the mid-river islands it had built with dikes. That same year, Congress specifically prohibited the Corps from extending Anacostia Park beyond Benning Bridge, which forced the Corps to drop its plans for a drawbridge. In late 1922, dredging temporarily ceased after funding for continued dredging ran out.